DigiHealth Technologies procures Pharmarack and market research firm AIOCD AWACS

CIOReviewIndia Team | Friday, 02 April 2021, 05:52 IST

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DigiHealth Technologies procures Pharmarack and market research firm AIOCD AWACS

DigiHealth Technologies, a subsidiary of a partnership firm owned by leading Indian pharmaceutical majors, has procured market research firm AIOCD Pharmasofttech AWACS and B2B marketplace Pharmarack Technologies, as it looks to construct the IT infrastructure and supply chain required for pharmaceutical distribution.

DigiHealth is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ABCD Technologies, which is to be renamed to IndoHealth Services, counts Indian pharma majors Alkem Laboratories, Cadila Healthcare, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s, Lupin, Mankind Pharma, Sun Pharma and Torrent Pharma as investors, as per the press report.

That a consortium of pharma players including Sun Pharma, Cadila Healthcare, Lupin and Torrent Pharma were in advanced stages of acquiring Pharmarack to build their own digital-first distribution business. The report stated that more pharmaceutical companies could buy into the grouping.

“Both AWACS and Pharmarack have over the years created a digital ecosystem in the pharmaceutical industry downstream supply chain. The investment has been made with a view to develop a world-class pharmaceutical supply chain and distribution IT ecosystem,” according to the report.

DigiHealth stated that it would be run by an independent board and management and that both AWACS and Pharmarack had independent management teams with “strong governance protocols to data privacy and neutrality”.

People in the know of the deal that said that the key challenge for the grouping would be to ensure that the platform remains neutral in order to make pharma companies working with it more comfortable. They stated that the grouping was also looking to build its own online pharmacy at some point to compete with Reliance Industries, Tata, Amazon and others.

India’s online pharmacy sector received a massive boost due to the Covid-19 pandemic, drawing in large players such as RIL, Tata, Amazon and Apollo Pharmacy. Experts and competitors stated that the pharma majors saw this as a challenge as online pharma retail players are launching their own private label brands that compete with products from pharmaceutical firms.

The consortium of pharmaceutical players is one of the first such groupings in India where traditional manufacturers have come together to take on large players in the fast-growing online space.

A person in the know of the deals stated that the pharma grouping had appointed KPMG to come up with a plan on building an online pharma distribution business and use the base of retailers this firm works with to also start selling to consumers through an online pharmacy platform.

Pharmarack is estimated to be working with 3,000-4,000 distributors and 100,000 retailers in the pharma space, offering services such as analytics, logistics, and supply chain financing. AWACS on the other hand is engaged in data collection and market research focused on data analytics, added.

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